Fake News

Abstract

Fake news, in the sense of lying (the circulation of disinformation) is, of course, nothing new. While it is today typically associated with political propaganda or conspiracy theories such as climate change denial, it is as old as human communication itself, and a seemingly inevitable aspect of public discourse. Falsehoods can be used for numerous ends, from myth to satire to outright deception; the effects of fake news can range from laughter to death (Burkhart JM. Libr Technol Rep 53(8):1–36, 2017, p. 5). One might doubt the utility of a buzzword such as “fake news”, but the phenomena indicated by the term nonetheless constitute a serious challenge to modern notions of the “public sphere” as the space in which commonality is established and maintained. The very idea of the Anthropocene, and the contexts in which it appears, is perhaps one of the best illustrations of the risks involved, as well as of the problematic nature of “fake news” as a concept.

In this paper, we briefly review the literature on fake news in order to locate common themes. One of these in particular stands out as central, namely, the perceived threat to liberal democratic institutions and the viability of the very idea of a public sphere on which they rely. We argue that while empirical studies and categorization of actors, motives, effects, and techniques of dissimulation and distortion are useful for understanding the nature of fake news, they tend not to pay careful attention to what is perhaps the greatest challenge, namely, the expansion and consequent reconstitution of the public sphere as a genuine plurality, with all the risks of disintegration that is entailed. We conclude with a proposal, inspired by Steve Fuller, that we acknowledge the post-truth condition as a kind of “fact” of contemporary life in which the most important function of the public sphere is, as Richard Rorty would say, to keep the conversation going. This means that the notion of “fake news” should not be taken at face value, but seen as itself a trope in that discourse. The article ends with a consideration of the fate of the Anthropocene as a scientific term to exemplify this point.